Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: RandomTiger on October 18, 2002, 09:28:14 pm

Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 18, 2002, 09:28:14 pm
Hi there, I've taken a short break from DX8 programming to implement something I wanted to see in this engine.

A special pause that allows you to toggle external view and rotate around your ship. I thought this would be very useful for getting screenshots (and general fun).

Heres some I got with it:

(http://www.ijbrooks.demon.co.uk/tom/screen00.jpg)
(http://www.ijbrooks.demon.co.uk/tom/screen01.jpg)
(http://www.ijbrooks.demon.co.uk/tom/screen02.jpg)

Anyway if you want a shot its now part of the fs2_open exe.

Keys:

Alt-Pause to enter special pause mode (and again or just pause to leave)

Once in pause mode:

Enter: External ship view
Tab: Toggle hud

The just use the number keypad like you normally would.

If people find it really useful I might add more functionality to make it even better. (Theres probably a few bugs to fix as well). Let me know what you think. :)
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Black Wolf on October 18, 2002, 09:34:49 pm
:eek2: Looks f***ing sweet dude. Excellent work :D
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Solatar on October 18, 2002, 09:35:11 pm
:) :yes:
This is one of the most usefull source code MODs yet. Finally, no HUD getting in the way.
Thank you!!!
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Thor on October 18, 2002, 09:54:54 pm
You know I'll like it.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Galemp on October 18, 2002, 10:20:32 pm
Can you say "Bullet Time Mod?" ;)
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Solatar on October 18, 2002, 10:29:24 pm
Damn, that thing is awesome, I just had to say that twice.
:D
I've already used it. It helps a lot.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Bobboau on October 18, 2002, 11:12:57 pm
could you get it to swich targets, ie have it go around the ship you have targeted (or something), I havn't looked at the code related to this stuff so I have no idea how your doing this
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 18, 2002, 11:16:12 pm
Thats the kind of thing that we could do to expand it. However the code doesnt lend itself to well for that as you'll see if you take a look. Still could be worth the effort.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: LAW ENFORCER on October 18, 2002, 11:50:57 pm
does the 2d .anis look bad when rotating or not? (like some games do:rolleyes: )
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Sesquipedalian on October 19, 2002, 01:48:02 am
Incidentally, does this exe represent all the latest stuff from the main fs2_open branch, or only the addition of this feature?
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Bobboau on October 19, 2002, 02:28:15 am
are the beams still tiled way too much?
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 19, 2002, 05:59:13 am
LAW ENFORCER: Yep, its the way the engine works, sorry
Sesquipedalian: Yep everything should be in there
Bobboau: Yep tiling is still there and it doesnt look great paused either
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Solatar on October 19, 2002, 07:47:12 am
Just for everybody who doesn't like tiling, let me tell you, it is optional.
Anyway, you could rip some code out of FRED2 so that your ship can rotate around your target.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: wamingo on October 19, 2002, 10:56:34 am
I've tried it several times in two missions now and it works fine so far, except it seems you're sort of able to control the camera with the mouse but sort of not... not that it's important it just seems odd that it's half-working... if ya don't wanna work on it you could just disable it, it's not all that useful.
nice work :)
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: vyper on October 19, 2002, 11:54:59 am
Wheeeeeeeeee! Time for nice clean screenshots w/o targeting data! :thepimp:
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Stunaep on October 19, 2002, 02:39:45 pm
One question: What have you done to the Warp ani. It looks sweet!
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 19, 2002, 02:45:18 pm
You mean in the screenshot? Nothing, just got a view of it thats difficult to get without using the new pause feature.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Dr.Zer0 on October 19, 2002, 04:00:58 pm
that first screenie looks like something relly relly neat
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: untouchable on October 19, 2002, 04:42:14 pm
(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/da/images/bullet-time.jpg)

hehe :D

Is there a possibility that somone could add something to the Fred2.exe now so that this can be used as an event in mission design? That would be friggen awesome :nod:
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Thor on October 19, 2002, 05:04:01 pm
You mean make it go matrix-like, say if a crucial ship goes boom.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 19, 2002, 05:07:35 pm
That would be cool but very difficult I imagine.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Thor on October 19, 2002, 05:09:46 pm
most likely.  shame:(
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: IceFire on October 19, 2002, 06:26:43 pm
Cinematic control over a mission is a big thing on my wish list...no doubt the team can work on something like that after other things are done like getting the game to work in DX8 and improving the visuals.

A matrix like visual effect would be very awesome....and as far as I know, the first time ever done in a space combat game. :D
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 19, 2002, 06:30:23 pm
Quote
Originally posted by IceFire
visual effect would be very awesome....and as far as I know, the first time ever done in a space combat game. :D


A good reason to try, if we all keep working hard we might be able to deliver a lot of 'firsts'.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Anaz on October 19, 2002, 11:32:47 pm
doesn't seem that hard, you just add some type of flag for the pause thingy (probably passed to it when you call the function, like is_matrix or something like that), and if is_matrix is true, then you position the camera at a certain angle, and then add one to it each time (or 2, or sommat...) until you get back to the starting angle, then the function returns. Not to hard imho...
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 20, 2002, 05:37:11 am
I wish non coders wouldnt make judgements about how hard things are. Almost always you fail to realise how complex everything is.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Sesquipedalian on October 20, 2002, 06:14:53 am
All I've done was try to write a couple sexps, and I had a how-to.  I'm never going suggest something will be "easy" to code again!
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: EdrickV on October 20, 2002, 08:43:51 pm
Parts of a "Matrix"ish slow motion ship death may not be too hard to do. There is, apparently, support for moving the viewpoint to another ship, though I'm not sure how it works. The code also has built in code for controlling "time compression" that might be usable to slow time down. (The time compression value is normally set to 65536. Setting it to something less may slow down time, though I'm not entirely sure since, again, I can't test it.) As far as rotating the viewpoint, that I don't know anything about but if you can set it's origin to another ship it may be able to rotate around it just as it does for the player's ship. In theory. In practice, this may not be as easy as it sounds. For one thing, the player would probably have trouble doing anything during the effect due to the sudden slow mo, and I'm not sure how much we could slow the game down or if slowing it down at all will break something.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 20, 2002, 09:14:38 pm
We are not in a standard event time when paused with the special code, normal rules dont apply.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: EdrickV on October 20, 2002, 09:30:14 pm
Quote
Originally posted by RandomTiger
We are not in a standard event time when paused with the special code, normal rules dont apply.


I was not talking about doing anything with that special pause, don't have the code for that so I don't know how that works. I was talking about an in-game special effect. :)
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 20, 2002, 09:40:49 pm
Ah.. :)
Perhaps a seperate thread in the source code forum would be an idea.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Darkmage on October 21, 2002, 06:44:16 am
I think it'd be awesome to see a homeworld styl movie system implemented. i know it wouldn't be dead easy to implement, but it SHOULD be possible.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 21, 2002, 06:57:17 am
THeres a trhead about that in the relevent forum as well.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 21, 2002, 06:57:22 am
THeres a trhead about that in the relevent forum as well.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: karajorma on October 21, 2002, 01:52:49 pm
If you`re going to do an option to do something like this PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give us the option to turn it off.

 I gave up on starlancer cause I got sick of being in the middle of a battle and suddenly having to sit and wait to watch another bloody animation (especially if I'd already tried and failed that mission already).
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Bobboau on October 21, 2002, 10:51:07 pm
two bugs I'd like to report,
I get invalid sun numbers in some missions (ya I know vage, if you can't find it I'll be more specific) it triggers an assertion but I forget what it is,
I think total_time1 is getting used without being initalised in freespace.cpp, as fs has been locking (as if in an infinite loop) for me lately, and I saw that warning in the output window and saw it was related to the game being paused so I thought it may have been something you changed.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 22, 2002, 05:07:37 am
Will look into ASAP.
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 22, 2002, 05:45:00 am
Do these things take place if you dont pause?
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: Bobboau on October 22, 2002, 08:59:03 am
the lockup thing happens at startup, but I get "Assert: sun_n < Num_suns, starField.cpp, Line: 783" some times,
BTW I'm useing my version of TBP for testing becase it loads five times faster, but if I don't get this error in normal play mode it must be something diferent
Title: New screenshot functionality
Post by: RandomTiger on October 22, 2002, 09:25:49 am
I've sorted total_time1 , I dont think it was really a problem as such since this only occured when my pause was used.
 
found it, im on the case!

Fixed, also put HUD toggle on TAB key while in special pause mode while I was there.